Fourteen
Marcus rolled to the side, lowering Cecelia gently to the bed, and she burrowed into him, even in her sleep. God, he loved this woman. She’d cried until she’d exhausted herself, great sobs heaving from her tiny frame until she’d finally stilled on top of him and rested.
She rolled toward him, looking for the heat of his body like it had always been hers to claim. And he supposed it had. He was hers. She was his. He’d been an idiot for the space of six months, but things were well now. Things were as they should be. Now she just needed to marry him and everything would be perfect.
He placed his lips tenderly against her forehead and pulled back, sliding from beneath the counterpane. He pulled on a robe that hung on the edge of the bed and walked out to the kitchen. He hoped he could find something in the kitchen to eat. It had been a while since anyone had been in the cabin, but surely there were some supplies. He stopped in the threshold of the kitchen when he heard whistling.
“You’re at the wrong place at the wrong time, Ronald,” Marcus warned. Ronald stepped from behind the counter, an apple clenched between his teeth.
“Never a wrong place. Not when you need help.” The gnome winked. “Who do you think left the fresh water for you?”
The sorry little sot.
Ronald brushed a hand through the air, dismissing Marcus with a simple gesture. “There are always consequences for your actions,” the gnome warned, talking around a bite of apple. He nodded toward a basket on the table. “I brought sustenance for you.”
“Thank you,” Marcus grunted, not yet willing to be as appreciative as he should.
“I had to tie Millicent up and put her in the closet to keep her away from here.”
Marcus’s head jerked up. “You did not.”
“Truthfully, I just sent her on a wild-goose chase. Said I’d seen the two of you down by the shore.” He shot Marcus a telling glance. “It won’t be long before she shows up here.”
“Keep her away. I promised Cecelia one day.” He riffled through the basket, pulling out cheese and meat and some warm shepherd’s pie. “Who baked?”
“I stole it from Millicent’s house,” the gnome said with a shrug. “She won’t mind once she realizes it’s for her girl. She’ll get over the fact that you’ll be partaking of it, too.” He snickered.
“What were you doing at Milly’s house?” Marcus asked.
“Stealing shepherd’s pie,” Ronald said crisply.
“And?” Marcus smiled. The thought of a romance between Milly and Ronald made him want to laugh out loud. Those two had been at one another’s throats for years and years.
“And it’s none of your concern,” Ronald growled. “Who knows? We might plant a seed in the ground and see if we can grow any little garden gnomes.”
The idea whirled like a tornado in Marcus’s head. “That’s how…” At Ronald’s scorching glance, he didn’t finish his thought. But he still wondered. “How long have you known Milly?”
“Forever,” Ronald said, tossing his apple core into the rubbish bin.
“And you two have never…” He let his thought trail off again.
“Again, mind your own matters,” Ronald chided.
“And you should do the same.” Ronald knew what they’d been doing. He probably knew that Cecelia was naked in Marcus’s bed right now.
“Milly and I married centuries ago,” Ronald said quietly. “She’s mine. I’m hers. End of story.”
Married? They were married. “What?” Marcus gasped out.
The gnome shrugged. “I love her. She loves me, most of the time. We each have obligations. We see one another as time permits. The life of a gnome is a solitary existence. But we make do.”
“But you rarely get to see her.”
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that,” the gnome said. He started to sift through the basket, looking for more to eat. Marcus jerked it from his reach.
“But Milly hates you,” Marcus wondered aloud.
“Hello Pot. My name is Kettle,” Ronald said drolly. Then he sobered. “So, Cecelia must not hate you anymore.”
“Not right this moment,” Marcus said, tensing at the thought of Cecelia ever hating him.
“She came right out with it and told you she loves you.” Ronald narrowed his eyes at Marcus.
“Not yet.” She hadn’t. He’d said it multiple times that day, but she hadn’t said it yet. But she would. She couldn’t avoid it. “She asked me not to ask her for anything today.”
“That makes a lot of sense, seeing how much you love her.” Ronald snorted. Marcus really loved the little garden gnome at times. And really despised him at others.
“She’s had a tough go of it,” Marcus said. “She asked me for one day. Then we’ll marry and set things to rights.”
“She said she’ll marry you?”
“Not in so many words.” She had never really agreed, had she? She hadn’t.
“I think that she had her way with you, and now she’ll dispense with you and go back to her sorry life.” Ronald hitched up his breeches and glared at Marcus.
“Her life’s not sorry, you little…” He reached for the gnome, but Ronald had always been too fast for him.
“Her life is sorry, and if you knew anything about her, you would know how hard she’s had it since you left.” He shook a finger at Marcus. “I’m warning you, lad, take great care with how you go about this.” He gestured to the cabin. “All this is fine and good, but real life will rear its ugly head before you know it.”
“This is real life,” Marcus grumbled.
“No, it’s the life you want. It’s not real life. There’s a difference.”
Ronald crossed to the window and threw open the sash.
“There’s a perfectly good door, you know,” Marcus said.
“Why use a door when there’s a perfectly good window?” The gnome glared at him for a moment and then turned and flung himself out the window.
Good riddance.
Ronald had no idea what he was talking about. This wasn’t a storybook life. This was real life. This was his life with Cecelia. This was real. Wasn’t it?
***
Cecelia stood beside a frozen lake, her arms flung out to the sides as she looked up at the night sky. Her father stood on one side of the lake, beckoning her to come to him. Instead, she fell back into the icy waters. She let them slide over her skin and suck her under the lake’s surface, until there was no air left to breathe.
Cecelia awoke with a start. There was coldness all around her, but she was safe beneath the comfort of Marcus’s warm counterpane. Yet an icy, cold something pressed against her back. She leaned back to look up at Marcus’s face, where he rested on his elbow, looking down at her. “You’re freezing,” she complained, pulling the counterpane closer about her naked shoulders. She looked down and realized she was completely naked. Then she looked over at him, and so was he. The only heat in the room was what crept up her face, apparently. “Where have you been?” she asked, looking everywhere but at his smiling face.
“I went to find food,” he said, snuggling his cold body closer to her. He flung one leg over her thighs and nudged her hip with… that couldn’t be…
“And took a dip in an icy loch, did you?” she asked. “You’re freezing.”
“I lit a fire in the kitchen and one in here,” he said, cupping his hand over a yawn. Then he looked down at her. “Did you sleep well?” he asked.
She nodded. She’d slept better than she had in a very long time. She looked toward the window. The light was waning. Hadn’t it been morning just a short time ago? “What time is it?” she asked.
“Dusk,” he said. His voice sounded like it had been dragged down a gravel road.
She sat up, and the counterpane fell below her chest. She snatched it back up with a gasp. “I slept that long!” She flung her feet over the side of the bed and started to get up. But he wrapped a strong arm around her waist and drew her back to him. She didn’t
protest. Not really. She wanted to stay with him forever, never to go home. But reality would intervene before long.
Cecelia lay back against his arm, which had slipped beneath her head somehow. She turned to face him, their noses no more than inches apart. “Did you sleep well?” she asked.
“Not as well as you, I’m afraid.” He picked up a lock of her hair and toyed with it. “I love you, you know,” he said softly.
“Not today, Marcus.” She held up one finger. “One day. You promised,” she reminded him.
“I’ll never stop telling you, Cece,” he declared, and a lump formed in her throat.
Her stomach grumbled and she laid a hand upon it. “Oh, dear,” she said with a laugh. This was Marcus. He wouldn’t care if her stomach grumbled in a very unladylike way.
Marcus jerked the counterpane from around her shoulders and shoved it down so he could trail a finger over her belly. “Hungry, are you?” he asked softly. Then he bent and pressed his soft lips to the tender skin just above her hip.
“Mmm-hmm,” she murmured. Though she was not thinking about food at the moment. “Unless you had something else in mind,” she teased.
“I have a lot of things in mind,” he said with a laugh. She covered her breasts with her hands, and he looked up at her and rolled his eyes. “I think we’re past that point, don’t you?” He climbed up her body and whispered in her ear, “I’ve been inside you, Cece.”
Her heart leaped and a throbbing began between her thighs. “Yes, you have.”
“And I plan to do it again,” he murmured, kissing across the sensitive skin of her belly, until he could come up and kiss her lips quickly.
“Thank goodness,” she breathed.
He looked at her askance. “Do you want to eat first?”
“I want to do that and then eat and then do it again,” she said with a giggle. He wouldn’t hate her audacity, would he? If the way his eyes smoldered at her suggestion was any indication, he didn’t dislike it at all.
“I do like it when you take me by the hand and lead me,” he whispered, his fiery lips kissing just above the spring of hair between her thighs.
“Marcus,” she complained.
“What’s good for the goose and all that,” he said, mocking her earlier words. He slid his fingertips into her heat and began to stroke her from top to bottom. He slid a finger inside her quickly, rimming her entrance, and that brought her wetness up to that pulse point at the top of her sex. “I think I know how to please you,” he whispered with a smile, his touch growing more insistent.
“Yes, you do…” she gasped out.
Her breath hitched in her throat, and she was no longer able to respond to him, aside from a moan and a squeeze of his arm.
“I do like exploring you,” he said, as he bent and drew her nipple into his mouth.
“I like your exploration,” she managed to squeak out.
“I can tell,” he said. But he pulled his hand back and moved to lie between her thighs. “But I can’t wait one more moment to be inside you.”
“Please don’t wait,” she said, although she already missed his touch. He spread her thighs wide and looked down at her, licking his lips in a most carnal manner. He left a little space between them when he entered her. This time was still slow and soft, but he filled her fully and completely, rotating his hips around as he was seated fully inside.
“God, that’s pretty,” he groaned as he looked down at the place where they were joined. She flung an arm over her eyes to keep from seeing him, and he just chuckled. But then one hand snaked between them, and he began to rub that pulse point he’d discovered as he moved inside her. He took her slowly, building in speed as she urged him on.
“Don’t stop,” she said, her hips arching to meet his thrusts.
***
Marcus watched her face as he brought her higher and higher. He had to bite his lip and think about ices at Gunter’s and the cold water in the morning that he poured from the pitcher in his chambers. It wasn’t working. His balls ached with the need to spend inside her. Every thrust was pure heaven, and the way she arched to meet him nearly undid him.
But he continued, rolling his fingers over her pleasure center as he moved in and out, in and out, in and out, and then with a cry, she reached out, and he caught her hand in his. She spasmed on his manhood like a tight fist, and he rode out the storm with her squeezing him, her body quaking in his arms. He came inside her, soaking her walls with his release. And he’d never felt so at peace as he did in that moment when he collapsed on top of her and pushed her damp hair from her face. He’d made love to her twice. He’d taken her innocence, and she’d taken his, just as it should be.
He rolled off her and flopped onto his back. “Did you know Ronald and Milly are married?”
She lifted her arm from her eyes and looked over at him, her blue eyes clear in the waning light. “No,” she said, and she laughed. “I knew she had an odd obsession with his whereabouts. They don’t spend much time together.” She nodded her head. “That makes sense, now that you mention it.”
“Do you think they’re faithful to one another?” Marcus couldn’t help but ask.
“I think I don’t want to think about Milly and Ronald doing what we just did,” she said with a shudder.
“He said they might plant a seed in the ground and see what grows of it.”
He leaned over Cecelia and laid his face on her stomach, looking up over the swell of her breasts to see her face. She didn’t stop him, and she twined her fingers with his. He kissed the soft skin of her belly tenderly.
“Milly and Ronald with a child. I shudder to think,” she said, laughing.
He kissed her stomach again, imagining the swell of unborn life that could be theirs, and he smiled. “I want a child. Or two. Or ten.”
She nodded, but she didn’t respond except to say, “You always did.”
The fingers of her free hand toyed with his unbound hair. “You don’t?” he probed.
She held up a single finger. “One day,” she groaned. “You promised me one day.”
“One day,” he agreed. He would give her one day. And then he would ask her all the questions he needed to ask her. And he needed some answers from her. But they could wait as long as her one day. “I’m hungry,” he said, reaching for the basket he’d set beside the bed. “And I might just use you for the plate.”
“Promises, promises.” She giggled.
She sounded like his Cecelia so he didn’t want to ruin the moment, but he wanted some answers now. Some things could not wait. “What made you cry earlier, Cecelia?” he asked as he set a wedge of cheese on her belly and popped a blueberry into her mouth.
She thought for a moment as she chewed. But then she spoke. Her voice was clear. “I was broken. And you put me back together.” She touched her fingertips to his bent knee. “Thank you,” she said softly, but her voice was clear. It was so clear that it reached into his soul and squeezed his heart.
“You’re welcome,” he said. And then he proceeded to paint her with clotted cream and lick it off. And she didn’t protest even the slightest bit.
Fifteen
Cecelia let Marcus help her back into her clothing, with plenty of pauses for kisses, nips, and licks of appropriate body parts. Then he pulled her between his thighs and brushed her hair until it was silky soft and didn’t look like he’d tumbled her. Several times. She looked much more at ease than she had when they’d arrived at the cabin, and that said a lot to him.
She could be happy with him. He could marry her and life could be perfect.
“Where will you tell your father you’ve been all day?” he asked gently as he turned her to face him and laid his forehead against her stomach, so tightly that his nose was pressed into the soft flesh of her belly. His hands held tightly to her hips. Fear gnawed at his own belly, and he really didn’t want to take her home. He wanted to hide out there with her forever. He wanted to live in that tiny cabin and never leave it again, with R
onald bringing them necessary food and supplies. But such was not to be his lot in life.
She shrugged. “I hadn’t planned to tell him anything. His opinion no longer matters to me.” Her voice was suddenly dull and lifeless, and he wished he had never brought it up.
“What does that mean? How could that be?” he murmured, looking up into her face, his hands still resting on her hips, still holding her close to him.
“My day isn’t over yet. If you try to ruin what’s left of it, I won’t forgive you,” she warned.
He nodded at her. He would get to the bottom of this. If it was the last thing that he ever did, he would figure out what the rift was between her and her father.
“Do you know the time?” she asked.
He pulled his watch fob from his pocket and looked down. “Well past the dinner hour. Your father is probably worried sick.” He stood up and pulled her toward the door. “Come along. I’d better deliver you home.”
She nodded as she looked longingly around the room. “It’s time to go home,” she said quietly.
But she wasn’t broken. Not the way she’d been when he’d brought her there. She had seemed like a kite caught in a summer storm when they’d arrived. And now she was the gentle sun he’d always known, shining directly into his life.
They walked back to her house hand in hand. No one was on the roads between the cabin and town, and even if someone had been, they could have said they’d taken a walk. Rules were a little more lax in the land of the fae. They weren’t lax enough to allow for what they’d done that day, but they could take a walk without a maid. After all, they were trusted to go on missions together.
Responsibility was earned in the land of the fae, as was trust. And if one proved oneself, one gained more and more freedom as the years passed. Not so in the other world, where status was all that mattered.
They walked slowly up the stairs at the front of her house and stopped at the threshold. Cecelia reached up and cupped his face in her palm, looking deeply into his eyes, hers as dark as night in the quiet of the evening. “Thank you for today,” she said softly, and she leaned forward and kissed him. No, this wasn’t a lusty mesh of teeth and tongue. This kiss was affectionate and comfortable.
The Magic Between Us (Faerie) Page 12